Ted Bell - Spy

“Run away to fight another day,” Saladin said with a wistful smile, lighting an unfiltered cigarette as if he’d just wandered off a goddamn golf course with a scratch round on his card.

“Fight?” Caparina said, glancing back at them. “You two have no earthly idea. I got a peek behind the curtain.”

“Tell me what you saw,” Harry said, leaning forward and putting his hand on her shoulder. “I need to check in. I need to know what we’re up against before I call Washington.”

“Tell them you’ve seen the future of warfare, Harry Brock.”

“Yeah? And what future is that, Caparina?”

“Robots, Harry.”

51

PRAIRIE, TEXAS

I love you, too, Sugarplum,” Daisy had said to her husband, marking her place in the old family bible with a sprig of bluebonnet wild-flower. She was talking on the phone, sitting on his side of the sagging double bed. She’d come in the bedroom for something when the phone by the bed had rung. She couldn’t remember why, what she’d been looking for in here, but she’d brought her bible with her.

She must have been thinking about her husband. How nervous he must be giving a speech in front of all those important people tomorrow. Standing at the bedroom window, watching the night fall, but seeing in her mind all those worry lines around his eyes.

That’s right when the phone rang, and sure enough it was Franklin.

One of those spooky coincidences. Serendipity, they called it. Not serendipity exactly, but something kin to that.

She’d leaned back against his soft pillow and listened to him worrying silently at the other end of the line. They had a bad connection, almost like he was calling from a cell phone. Which was silly, because he wouldn’t own one. Wouldn’t have one in the house.

“Franklin? You still there?”

“Yep. I’m here.”

“Who’s that yelling in the background?”

“Nice lady whose phone I borrowed. I guess I should give it back now.”

“All right, but you just stop worrying, okay? Go on back to the hotel and try to get some sleep. Tomorrow’s your big day. Especially with those tapes June got on video. I’m sure this Zamora fella is just a whole bunch of hot air. Just like the ones tried to scare us last time. And the time before that. All hat and no gun.”

“I’m sure you’re right. But please just do like I said, Daisy. Lock all the doors and windows and wait by the phone till the cruiser I called in gets out there. Okay?”

“I wish you hadn’t done that. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself. You know that.”

“I normally don’t bother you, Daisy.”

“I know you don’t. I’ll go close up the house right now, honey.”

“Good.”

“Night, darlin’.”

“G’night.”

Daisy had waited for his click and then reached over to put the receiver back in its cradle on her nightstand. The house was suddenly very empty.

“Shoot,” she said, staring up at the ceiling.

This wasn’t the first time somebody had threatened to harm her to get to Franklin. The last time this had happened, somebody trying to scare them like this, she’d had to tell Franklin every time the phone rang and nobody was there, every time a car she didn’t recognize slowed down going past the dirt road that led to their house, every time a letter or package came with handwriting she didn’t recognize, every time somebody looked at her cross-eyed buying aspirin in the drug store.

The phone rang again.

“Hello?” Daisy said, thinking it had to be Franklin again.

Silence. Then they hung up.

Another wrong number.

Third one tonight. She hadn’t told him about the first two. Didn’t want to get him more upset about nothing than he already was.

She swung her legs off the big empty bed and stuck her feet into her house slippers. She’d lock up and then she was ready for bed. Had her nightgown on and everything. She’d already locked up all the doors anyway. Now she went from room to room, checking, locking the windows in the kitchen, the small back bedroom, and Franklin’s study.

In the parlor, the two windows on either side of the front door were wide open with the thin curtains blowing in. She spread her hands on the windowsill and peered out into the dark night. Not too many stars out and it had turned cold. She heard the faint hum of tires out on the highway, somebody going past at a pretty good clip, on into the night. Then another car going in the opposite direction. Real slow.

She waited, listening for it to keep going past the little dirt road leading to their house.

It did.

The distant hum of a car going by on a lonely highway at night was a weird thing. She often lay in bed, waiting for sleep, and listened to them passing by out there. On a rainy night, especially, there was that sad hissing sound the tires made on the way to somewhere else. Who was it behind the wheel? Where were they going? What was going on in their minds as they watched that long yellow line disappearing in the rear view mirror? Was someone sitting next to them? Who?

Franklin had spooked her, all right.

No question about it. She pulled the damn front windows down, both of them, locked them, and went back into the bedroom. She got down on her knees beside the bed. Looked like she was fixing to pray, but she wasn’t. She was just doing the next best thing, getting her gun. She bent down to fetch the double-barreled Parker. It was a rare Sweet Sixteen shotgun that Franklin had rejiggered to fit her for her twenty-first birthday. Sawed a couple of inches off the stock and gave it to her on the big day itself.

A sawed-off gun for a grown-up girl, the card said. She still had it stuck in the mirror all these years later.

She lifted the worn chenille bedspread and felt around with her right hand until her fingertips brushed the smooth cold barrels. She pulled it out and lifted it to her nose. God help her, she loved how that damn gun smelled more than was natural in a woman.

Daisy kept half a dozen or so shells locked in the right hand drawer of the dresser. Double-ought buckshot. She unlocked the drawer and fished out a couple. Then she levered the gun open and loaded it. She snapped it shut, made sure the safety was on, and went back into the kitchen. After laying the gun across the table, she lit a wooden kitchen match and turned on the gas, lighting the burner under the teakettle.

Sitting there at the kitchen table, facing the bedroom, she knew she could easily swivel her head and see both the front door and the back door. Looking straight ahead, she’d see anybody who just happened to be peeking in her bedroom window.

She’d deliberately left the porch lights on, front and back. And now she decided she’d best turn all the lights in the house off and sit in the dark. That way she could see them before they saw her.

Not that there was any “them,” she told herself, moving from room to room and extinguishing lights, but she’d heard something catch in Franklin’s voice tonight when he told her how much he loved her.

You sit watching them in the dark, a kettle take an extra long time to whistle. And, a ticking kitchen clock sounds a whole lot slower and louder. She had the Parker in her lap now. Pretty soon the cruiser would show up, park out in front of the house. She’d walk around the house with Homer or Wyatt or whoever was on duty, see that there was nothing to see, and then she could maybe go on to bed and get a little sleep. Even though it was so hard with Franklin gone.

Any damn bed felt ten sizes too big without your man in it. All her friends who’d lost their husbands said so.

The thought, when it first came, hit her so hard she almost fell out of her chair.

A woman alone.

That’s what the Mexican guy in the restaurant had said to Franklin. You had to worry about a woman alone, he’d said. She was alone, sure. But so were a few other women here in Prairie.